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the capture of the “Murder Colonels.” In early
1934 a group of American military officers, discontented with the perceived
“socialism” of President Roosevelt, gained access to the information gathered
in 1929 by the Miskatonic University expedition to the South Pole. They
used this information to begin breeding creatures which would help them
to overthrow the American government. These creatures, the “Neo-Arachnid
Variants,” were spawned in vast caverns underneath Chicago. Led by Doc
Brass, who had been tracking a bizarre and savage series of murders along
the coast of Lake Michigan, the Seven attacked the caverns, destroyed the
feral miscegenates, and defeated the “Murder Colonels.”
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the slaughter of the Horrors of Nelia-Sai.
In late 1934 a mysterious Asian stranger named Dr. Lao began touring around
America’s southwest, showing off wagons of what the stranger said were
“mythical beasts and demigods.” His creatures, part of Dr. Lao’s “Circus,”
had a strange and cumulatively unwelcome effect on those viewing it. Doc
Brass, hearing about this “Circus,” investigated and discovered that “Dr.
Lao” was in fact not Chinese, as he informed those unwary enough to ask,
but Tibetan; that his assistants on the circus were not Chinese dwarfs
but rather the accursèd Tcho-Tcho, far from their mountain homes;
that the beings in the wagons were not centaurs, pegasi, and other creatures
from Greek and Western myths but instead the dreadful Horrors of the village
of Nelia-Sai, infamous in certain Chinese writings as the focal point of
dread Leng’s intrusion into the blasted Plateau of Tsang in Tibet. Doc
Brass and the Seven confronted “Dr. Lao” and the caged Horrors in 1935
and wiped them out, preventing a rite that even I will not name or set
to paper. Brass and the Seven immediately made arrangements for a science
fiction writer to turn the encounter into a lyrical and gently melancholic
novel, thus ensuring that all those exposed to the Circus would remember
the facts in a very different way than they had occurred.
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the defeat of the UnderEngland Junta. The
Junta had begun life as the “Black Trinity,” a trio of power-crazed businessmen
intent on seizing control of England’s government through economic means.
The Trinity had been defeated by Sexton Blake and sent to jail, but more
than a decade later they were sprung from jail by Zenith the Albino and
Olga Nasmyth (the “Girl of Destiny”), two of Blake’s other enemies. They
teamed up with the infamous arch-criminal “Marko the Miracle Man” in an
attempt to overthrow the English government by violent means. Their plan
was to use their combined technological know-how to produce lethal androids–the
“Black Royalty”–and overwhelm the English armed forces. After the defeat
of the English army the group would install themselves as the “UnderEngland
Junta,” ruling Great Britain and the Dominion countries from their armed
complex underneath London. They had not anticipated the detective work
of Dixon Hawke, Dixon Brett, Nelson Lee, and Sexton Blake, four of England’s
greatest detectives and adventurers, nor had thought that those four stalwarts
would bow to necessity and ask for help. Hawke, Lee, and Blake did, however,
and called in the Seven, who defeated the Black Royalty and the Junta in
a fierce battle that darkened London’s skies and made its ground shake.
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a permanent set-back to the Emperors of America.
The “Emperors” were actually Scorpia, a particularly ambitious branch of
the criminal organisation known as THRUSH, but those in charge of the cell
were not content with THRUSH’s much slower and more careful policy of advancement.
The Emperors were interested in gaining power quickly, and so in 1937 Scorpia,
armed with the weapons technology of the criminal scientist “Dr. Centaur,”
attempted to seize power, beginning with an attack on Hawaii. Tipped off
by Lieutenant Don Winslow, who had clashed with “Dr. Centaur” and Scorpia
on several occasions, the Seven tracked Scorpia back to their Pacific Island
lair and utterly defeated them. What THRUSH thought of this is not known,
but they could not have been substantially unhappy at the defeat of a rebellious
and regrettably independent sect of their own organization.
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saving the world from the Charnel Ship. The
American government has suppressed all records of this incident, and the
surviving military officials and members of the press who witnessed the
passing of the Charnel Ship or the final battle between the Seven and the
Ship’s captain and crew. All I’ve been able to discover is that a dimension-crossing
vessel, shaped like an Earth ship from the Middle Ages but fashioned of
materials unknown to Man, landed on and passed through Earth several times,
leaving behind a trail of blasted, melted, and fused bodies. The Seven
somehow trapped the vessel, killing its crew and keeping the vessel.
During World War Two the Seven refrained from
taking more than minor roles in the defeat of the Axis. They apparently
felt that shifting the course of the war and of human civilization itself
was too complex a task for them to undertake without knowing, or at least
having a good calculation of, the consequences of their actions. They felt
that too few of their possible actions might turn out well, in the long
run (for that was how they were all thinking, by this time) and too many
might prove disastrous. By early 1945, however, they had found an answer
for this problem.
In their headquarters in the Adirondacks
Mountains James Anthony, Hark, and Tom Swift had combined to create an
extremely advanced computer, far beyond what is capable even now. This
computer was capable of generating and accessing an infinite number of
universes as a way to calculate the possible results of their actions.
The computer would scan every universe in the multiversal “snowflake” until
it found the result that the Seven desired, and then would generate information
on the desired Earth. The universes created by the computer would live
out their normal life span in the space of a few Earth seconds, and then
decohere.
Unfortunately, after the Seven had entered
every bit of information about the Earth into the “snowflake computer”
and told it to furnish the Seven with the equation that would end the war
with the minimum amount of death, creating the best possible world society
as a result, something happened. Something horrible.
Before the computer was finished with its
calculations, seven super-powered inhabitants of another Earth, in another
universe, saw that their universe was on the verge of ending and that the
Seven were watching them, and burst through the computer into the Seven’s
headquarters. A terrible battle followed, in which all seven of the aliens
and six of the Seven were killed. Only Anthony survived, and he was stuck
in the headquarters, unable to switch the “snowflake computer” off and
forced to watch it to make sure that no one else would come through to
attack Earth.
Jim Anthony, also known as “Doc Brass,”
would not reappear for another 44 years.
Next: Spindrift
Island